Category: Soapbox

The 21st Century Tower of Babel

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Tower-of-Babel

My mind wanders to make the most curious connections during my daily exercise routine. The other day, while in the middle of stretching my gaze fell upon an ordinary electrical wall outlet…

The Old Testament legend of the Tower of Babel was penned more than 2,700 years ago. Before being reduced to writing it must have been passed down as an oral tradition by countless generations. As conventionally understood, the “Tower” myth explains the diversity of languages in the world, “Now the whole world had one language and one speech.” (Genesis 11:1) It also hints at God’s intention to keep humanity in its place, “Come let us go down there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11:7). However, the most powerful and insightful part of the myth remains incredibly relevant today. Humanity, as one people, came together and decided to build a city and build “a tower whose top is in the Heavens”. God recognized the potential of humanity united, “…nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” (Genesis 11:4-6)

The tribalism that has existed since the dawn of time remains unabated today. It is perhaps the only thing that stands in the way of universal prosperity, the defeat of hunger, the elimination of disease, and even space travel that extends humanities reach like a tower “whose top is in the Heavens”. Unfortunately, nations dedicate vast resources in a competition that focuses only upon the subjugation of other nations and the defense from such subjection. The common mentality is one that defines the world in terms of us vs. them, and not just on a nation level but in terms of race, religion, socioeconomic status, and political affiliation. We act contrary to our best interests as a species and contrary to the health of our shared planet. Even when our “tribe” sees that another “tribe” has developed a superior means of addressing a problem, there is resistance to the change simply because it is not “our way”. Some tribalism is benign: What side of the road folks drive upon; Inches or Centimeters; Dollars or Euros… Some tribalism is dysfunctional: Declarations of a “national language”, a “national religion”… And then there are the dangerous tribalisms: the arms race, homophobia, racism… Sadly, tolerance and acceptance are the solutions that defy implementation. They are what virtually all religions preach, but few actually practice.

Now about the electrical outlet that I spied during exercise: It dawned on me that as we prepare to travel abroad I needed to secure converters to “translate” my North America style plugs to those used in the United Kingdom and Europe. The mind does work in mysterious ways.

Peace Everyone. Pete

Vaccines and Short-Term Memory

Posted on by Pete Schloss

The “good old days” were not so good.

In the United States life expectancy around 1888 was less than 50 years, and infant mortality approached 200 deaths per 1000 births. That’s 1 in 5 children being buried by Mom and Dad before the age of 5. Death among children came primarily due to various infectious diseases such as diarrhea, diphtheria, scarlet fever and tuberculosis. (statistics from the Journal of Pediatric Research)

The impact of vaccinations and modern medicine has been significant. By 1990, life expectancy in the United States had increased 50% to 75 years. Infant mortality fell an astounding 97% to less than 7 children per 1000 births.

Some folks do not develop immunity as well as others when vaccinated. However, there is a “herd effect” that confers protection because those who are unvaccinated or who have less immunity from a vaccine are surrounded by those who have vaccine acquired immunity. As more members of the “herd” forego vaccines, the herd protection declines and threatens everyone. Infectious processes again have a fertile population to run rampant within.

The human tendency is to examine one’s current circumstances and surroundings and fail to understand that it has not always been the way it is now. Look at your children’s (or grandchildren’s) classrooms, soccer teams, gymnastics classes, playgrounds… and imagine that 1 in 5 of those bright precious faces were suddenly dead. It is modern medicine that has saved us from the face of a horror once common to our grandparents and great-grandparents. Paraphrasing an old TV show, let’s decline to follow the invitation of the anti-vaccine, anti-science folks to: “Return to those thrilling days of yesteryear…

Peace Everyone. Pete

PS: There is an outbreak of measles in the Kansas City area that has experts very concerned. This “childhood” disease killed over 2.5 million people worldwide in 1980. Vaccinations have reduced that number to less than 100,000 by 2014. It only takes an epidemic of blind ignorance to reverse that trend.  The following obituary was found tucked within my wife’s family bible.

Herr Obit

The Coffee Pot

Posted on by Pete Schloss

July 7, 2010: We are 12, but not Apostles, we are bicyclists. We are 4 more, but not a Mathew, Mark, Luke or a John, we are support drivers. For nearly 40 days, like apostles or disciples, all of us have been cast into a unique mobile community, a bicycling commune. We have over 60 more days ahead of us. We have sacrificed our comfort… sharing rooms with former strangers. We have sacrificed our privacy… the “ladies’/men’s room” is in the bushes on THAT side of the road. We have compromised our sleeping habits, and our eating habits. We share our physical aches, and our emotional ones. The forge of our condition has tempered us into “family”.

I have pondered the inevitable times that we would be called upon to bring “others” into our fold. Segment riders, people who wholeheartedly embrace our undertaking, but because of work, family, or other considerations, are unable to assume the obligations of our entire coast to coast journey. What a challenge to suddenly appear, bags and bicycle in hand, among 16 people who have evolved their common experiences into understandings that need no words. We read the shrug of a shoulder, the furl of a brow, the shuffle of a step, as a melody in another member’s day. Sometimes our emotions sing the same song, sometimes another, but almost always with harmony. We are a chorus. Enter the “stranger”, the unknown voice.

Tom, was a stranger. He arrived in time to join us for the long and challenging ride from Rawlins to Riverside, Wyoming. That day’s ride saw us persevere over rough and narrow roads, through thunderstorms and hail, with headwinds and crosswinds gusting to over 50 miles per hours. There was no time for small talk, and no polite social graces were exchanged. At the end of the day, no one was in the mood to “welcome” anything other than a hot shower, a cold beer, and a warm bed. That night, our accommodations consisted of rough-hewn log cabins, likely built in the early 20th century.

At 5:30 a.m. the next morning I reluctantly stuck my head out the warped doorway and through the shredded screen door. I was looking to see if there was some sign of another day of hell-weather. The sky was ambiguous, but the scent was not. My nostrils were assailed by the rich pungent aroma of fresh roasted coffee. There was real caffeine in the air. Not the thin hint of the tepid dark imitation that is served up by most drip machines, but coffee with the raven darkness of abused motor oil. Tom, like the Pied Piper, was calling all of us coffee loving “rats” out of our lairs with the melody of his brew. He stood upon the dew sodden grass, illuminated by the early hint of dawn with a large, old style pewter espresso coffee pot in hand. I and the other “customers” lined up at his bidding, cups in hand. The tribulations of the prior day were forgotten, and Tom was instantly “one of us”.

The next few days gave me pause to consider the genius of Tom’s foresight. It occurred to me that anyone entering into a social order has a limited number of options with regard to the established group. One may ignore the group, not rejected or rejecting, but never accepted either, a non-person. One may choose to identify oneself to the group by emphasizing the distinctions and differences that exist between the individual and the group. This is a recipe for non-acceptance. There is also the less malignant, but no more effective, “I am one of you, but what makes me unique from you is…”. Then there is the “coffee pot”. The foresight to think of the others, to strive to embrace what we have in common, what we share, what we understand.

In our cycling group, we are not lawyers, clergy, doctors, business persons, social workers, retirees… we are people, we are family. Among us we strive to be “we”, “us”, and “our”, never “them”, never “they”. This is how it should be in the human family. It makes it so much easier to help and be helped, to accept and be accepted. Coffee anyone?

Peace Everyone! Pete Schloss

Spending and Saving, a Theory of Relativity

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Some time ago I listed to a radio presentation by an economist regarding “Relativity” in spending and saving habits. It stuck with me and I frequently call it to mind in making certain money decisions.

Imagine that you have entered a store to buy a $20.00 pen as a gift for a friend. You have selected the pen and as you approach checkout you learn that a few blocks away that very same model pen is on sale for $10.00. Research suggests that the great majority of shoppers would leave the first store in favor of saving $10.00 by purchasing the pen at the sale price elsewhere.

Here’s the kicker: Imagine instead that you are at a store preparing to purchase a $1,500.00 flat screen TV. Before checkout you learn that the same model is on sale down the street for $1,490.00. Research suggests that the majority of shoppers would not leave the first store in favor of saving $10.00 by purchasing the TV at the sale price elsewhere.

Same $10.00, but opposite behavior. The economist theorized that for most people, financial decisions are made in a relativistic fashion. However, the most successful managers of money (their own and others) see the $10.00 as a stand-alone quantity without regard to the value of the underlying purchase. They would evaluate whether to buy or not at the first store solely on the basis of whether the $10.00 saving was justified by the cost and inconvenience of proceeding to the second store.

Just some food for thought.

Peace Everyone. Pete

The Death Chamber at the Louisiana State Penitentiary

Posted on by Pete Schloss

“Seven Seatbelts for Angola”

At 3 p.m. on August 9, 2010, the Cycling for Change contingent arrived for our tour of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. We exchanged bicycles for a school bus. Our group was augmented by representatives of Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge, the bus driver (Mr. Washington), and Brad the prison chaplain.

It is 100 degrees outside. Factor in the humidity and that number exceeds 110. The sun is relentless, coating its unshaded victims like molten glass. Our bus briefly stops under a corrugated canopy, and after a guard takes a headcount and examines our picture ID’s the gate opens and the creaks of the bus undercarriage announce that we are proceeding onto the prison grounds.

Angola is unlike any other prison. It was created from 3 former antebellum plantations and encompasses 18,000 acres, roughly the size of New York’s Manhattan Island. The Mississippi River, which is nearing the end of its 2,500 mile journey, forms an imposing natural barrier on three sides of Angola. The fourth side lacks a perimeter fence as the dense mosquito infested swamp is considered an adequate deterrent to escape attempts. Brad comments that the last fellow to try his hand at “the swamp” emerged to surrender himself after 5 days, nearly eaten alive by the bugs.

There are no imposing walls, and no medieval looking stone structures. Located here and there in Angola are razor wire enclosed “camps”. These are self contained penal complexes of varying size, each one holding a portion of the total inmate population. Brad tells us that there are just under 5,000 offenders, and then corrects himself stating that with the addition of the newest camp the number has grown to nearly 5,200. Camps are designated by letter… Camp “A”, Camp “B”, and so on. We learn that Camp “J” is the discipline Camp… a jail within the Prison, housing around 600 offenders who present special problems and risks. That is really significant since 98% of the entire offender population of Angola will ultimately die in Angola.

If Louisiana’s prison needs grow, it is a simple matter to build additional camps at Angola. The spacious grounds look vacant, each camp appearing as a distant community separated by flat expanses of farmland. Angola is in fact one of only three agricultural prisons in the United States. There are miles of row crops, vegetable farms, 3,500 head of cattle, and one of the largest horse husbandry stables in the Country. This prison feeds itself and provides most of the animals used by law enforcement for mounted patrols in America. Inmates are the sole source of labor on these grounds, and with the exception of the medically, mentally, or behaviorally unfit, every inmate has a job. The grounds are impeccable. There are decorative flower gardens, neatly trimmed right-of-ways, pristine white cattle fencing. This could easily be Churchill Downs if there were only more trees and a racetrack.

Brad conducts our driving tour of Angola, directing Mr. Washington on where to turn and when to make stops. Brad is a curiosity in his own right. He is a man/boy of 27, married and father of two small children, his baby face and soft eyes seem ill-suited for a chaplain who ministers to the spiritual needs of one of the “hardest” congregations imaginable. Brad is a big man, a very big man, who turned down a major college football scholarship in favor of the seminary and God’s calling. As Brad talks about Angola and its residents, there is obvious love and respect for the population. God chose well.

Brad speaks with pride of the reforms that have occurred at Angola over the last 30 years. Gone are the days of the “hot boxes”. Inmates are provided with a well conceived system of freedoms, privileges, and incentives. He reports that prison gang activity has been largely eliminated. Serious inmate on inmate violence has been reduced from over 500 incidents per year to less than 100 annually. Offenders have opportunities to advance their education with GED classes and college courses taught by volunteers from local colleges and even Loyola University. Inmates eagerly seek to take advantage of those programs, even if they will never have the opportunity to use the knowledge in the free world.

As we proceed down one of the flat, ruler straight roads, Brad instructs Mr. Washington to stop at the small one-story concrete structure ahead on the left. This is the “Red Hat Cellblock”.

Angola’s Warden, Burl Cain, is credited with many of the reforms and improvements at Angola. Perhaps he subscribes to the notion that to forget one’s history is to risk repeating it. Red Hat was closed during the reforms implemented by a prior Warden in the 1970’s. Rather than level this structure, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places under Warden Cain’s tenure as a monument to a penal system of abuse. It is now protected from demolition. Constructed in the 1930’s, Red Hat is a long, narrow, white, single story, single hallway, standalone building surrounded by a tall barbed wire fence. It has 40 small cells, arranged 20 on each side. The corridor runs end to end. Each cell measures approximately 7 feet wide, by 9 feet deep. There was no heat or ventilation except for a small 1 foot by 2 foot barred window near the top of the 10 foot outer wall. Each cell had a single toilet to serve the needs of the occupants. Brad reported that one of the cells housed an inmate who was renowned for his repeated escape attempts. That inmate became the solitary resident of one of the Red Hat cells, his cell door being welded closed for over 7 years until near the time that he died.

The grounds surrounding Red Hat are desolate and forsaken. At the rear of the Red Hat cellblock is a large rusted electric generator. Wires still run from the generator into a side room of Red Hat, the sole purpose being the delivery of a massive surge of electrical energy into the hands and feet restraints of a wooden chair within the chamber. Within that room is the original, but now rusted, three blade switch that delivered a lethal current of electricity to end the lives of the chair’s occupants. Except for the wires and stout wooden chair, the room is more like a room in a long-abandoned farmhouse… holes in the walls and ceiling, cobwebs, mud wasps flying about. Returning to the bus we leave Red Hat, but the images of Red Hat will never leave us.

We arrive at the last stop of our tour. The bus pulls into a parking lot. In contrast with our experience at Red Hat, there is a well-maintained parking lot. The grass is trimmed with the precision of a golf course putting green. Flowering shrubs abound in front of and on the sides of a newer single story white building. There is no fence but the pastel colored exterior and interior doors all have curiously large locks, the kind that take keys which are the size of those made for a toddler’s play. We are greeted by uniformed prison staff, and Brad is addressed by name. We proceed into a larger room that has 5 or 6 round dining tables. The brightly painted cement block walls are decorated by two large oil paintings. They are well executed paintings of scenes from the Bible’s Old Testament; Daniel in the den of lions, and Elijah riding a chariot to Heaven. Brad makes a brief presentation before leading us down a corridor and through another door. We enter. On my right is an opened door and through that door I see that there are two small adjoining rooms which are separated from each other by a sliding wood paneled door. Each of these rooms has two rows of short but comfortable wood and leather chairs, the kind that might be found around an office conference table. I notice that one of these two rooms is slightly smaller and contains fewer chairs than the other. The chairs in both rooms are arranged for all to face the large picture windows that look into our “destination room”. Each room has a loudspeaker above the glass.

We enter the “destination room” in silence. The air is emotionally pulled from our lungs. In the center of the ceramic tiled floor is a single cruciform bed upon a metal pedestal. It is constructed of white enameled steel, thin black vinyl pads cover the top and the arms, which extend to the sides. Without instruction we arrange ourselves around the perimeter of this room which measures approximately 14 feet on each side. Near the head of the bed is a small window of one-way glass which conceals its interior and any occupants. The only connection between the persons or things within that room and the room in which we stand is a circular 4-inch port. On the wall near the left arm of the bed are two identical red telephones. We are given to understand that one is connected to the State Superintendant of Corrections and the other to the office of the Governor of Louisiana. At the right arm of the bed are the two picture windows. These windows are crystal clear and provide us with an unobstructed view of the unoccupied wood and leather chairs. Lighting on the white ceiling, 12 feet above the bed, is furnished by 4 fluorescent fixtures. The light is harsh even though the fixture lenses have browned with age. I imagine that for some occupants of the bed the light might have been easier to gaze into than the eyes of the observers in the adjoining rooms… or the large round clock that is above the two red telephones. I think to myself… “Let those who enter here abandon all hope.”

This is a foreign place. It is a place where few have ever been. It is a place where fewer have left alive than have entered. We have 5 senses to know our surroundings, but here our nature resists the use of our senses. The only sounds of this place are those that we make by our presence. There are no smells. There is nothing within for the preservation of life, nothing to taste, nothing to drink. None of us touch the bed even though there is nothing to prevent it. What we know is delivered in stark clarity by our eyes. What our eyes disclose is all strange, unfamiliar, and not a part of our prior experiences… except that there, lying upon the cruciform bed, I see seven common but out of place objects, and I understand a sad irony…

…About 20 years ago, somewhere in this country or another, there was a factory. Within that factory a worker stood at their duty station. It might have been a day like any other for that person. Perhaps the worker took pride in the knowledge that the simple task being performed would result in the saving of countless lives, the avoidance of serious injury, the enhancement of safety and security for thousands of people. On that day the worker carefully selected and packaged 7 seatbelts, and addressed the shipping label: Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola.

Peace Everyone. Peter Schloss